Posts tagged: Regulated Activity

From 10 September 2012, the definition of regulated activity related to ‘vulnerable adults’ will change. The Department of Health has published information on the scope of regulated activity in relation to adults: link here: Regulated Activity (adults)

Regulated activities are the activities that the Independent Safeguarding Authority can bar people from doing. It is a criminal offence for a barred person to seek to work, or work in, activities from which they are barred. It is also a criminal offence for employers or voluntary organisations to knowingly employ a barred person in regulated activity.

Regulated Activity (adults) sets out the scope of the barring regime for adults from 10 September 2012. For people who work in these roles the Criminal Records Bureau can provide an Enhanced Criminal Records Certificate with information about whether the individual is barred from working in regulated activity.

The Protection of Freedoms Bill Committee will hear oral evidence on Tuesday 22 and Thursday 24 March, these meetings are open to the public. The Committee will then continue to consider the Bill every Tuesday and Thursday from that point concluding on Tuesday 17 May. The relevant times for the safeguarding regime aspects of the Bill are below: Continue reading 'Freedoms Bill committee stage'»

An alliance of Sports Governing Bodies are challenging the new definition of Regulated Activity that is emerging from study of the Protection of Freedoms Bill. Some of the proposed details are open to interpretation and will have significant impact on established practice and policies. For instance :

Regulated Activity will no longer include any supervised teaching, training or instruction. In a sporting context, this requires clear definition. as the environment is so different to a school. The Faith sector are also likely to be unhappy with the implications of this change.

Current proposals are that only the applicant will receive the CRB disclosure. Clarity is needed on how National Sports Governing Bodies, and other professional regulators will receive this

There will be a charge for the updating service. How this will work for volunteers and whether they will still be able to get checks for free is not clear.

Following a number of enquiries, we are organising a briefing event in London on Thursday, 14th April with Simon Morrison, previously Head of Communications for the VBS , Mark Williams-Thomas, a criminologist who is frequently interviewed in the media about child protection issues and Liz Morrison who led the VBS roadshow programme. Continue reading 'Expert briefing – London 14th April'»

The chief executive of the Churches Child Protection Advisory Service (CCPAS), Simon Bass, has highlighted that there are major loopholes in the Protection of Freedoms Bill that will be exploited by those determined to abuse children and vulnerable adults. He said that the Government’s plans to scale back the Vetting and Barring Scheme (VBS) “will make it easier, not harder, for unscrupulous sexual predators to abuse in churches.”

The VBS Remodelling Review document recognises that removing barring arrange­ments for some activities could give rise to an increase in safeguarding risks. He was concerned that the review gave Sunday-school helpers as an example of where criminal records checks would not be required . He explained that a convicted abuser who is banned from working in a ‘regulated activity’, such as teaching, may, without any checks, altern­atively gain access to children through becoming a Sunday-school helper, with potentially devastating consequences. Mr Bass said

“these changes show that the Government is prepared to tolerate a level of risk in churches that we — with long and painful experience of dealing with abusers in church — find unaccept­able. We think it inevitable that potential predators will see children in churches as soft targets and will act accordingly.”

He agreed with other commentators that pro­posals in the Freedom Bill to allow the sharing of CRB checks between employers was “eminently sensible”.

The Children’s Rights Alliance for England (Crae) has applied for a judicial review of the refusal by the justice secretary, Ken Clarke, to identify and contact children who may have been unlawfully restrained in privately run secure training centres.

Under the Safeguarding Vulnerable Groups Act, all prison and probation officers would have been checked and monitored for their ongoing suitablity for the role as prisoners and people on probation would have been considered as being ‘vulnerable adults’. It remains to be clarified whether this promised level of protection will be compromised under the halving of the numbers defined as doing ‘regulated activity’ under the Protection of Freedoms Bill. Continue reading 'Judicial review of unlawful child restraint'»

Folowing the media attention on the ‘author’s story’, Sir Roger Singleton was invited to review aspects of the definition of Regulated Activity and its impact on the scope of the Vetting & Barring Scheme. His recommendations in Drawing the Line Dec 09 reduced the number of people who would need to be members of the scheme to 9 million